[i]A bat. That makes sense, I guess. Wonder if she has wings too, though I guess she would've mentioned them.[/i] 

Gavin looked at Luke as he began speaking. He found himself desperately envious of the boy. What a lucky guy, to have something that didn't hurt. He shrugged, loosening up slightly, though the appearance of the forked tongue did make him jump a bit. "I hope so. Honestly, it's not really the muscles that hurt with the mandibles, though they do hurt. It's mostly the cheeks, because occasionally they—"

Before he could even finish his whispered sentence, the mandibles caught a scent of something and once again expanded and contracted in his mouth, first stretching his cheeks painfully wide again, then slamming together with a clicking noise that he was pretty sure was audible through the entire room. He grimaced, a tear beading in his left eye as he massaged his bulging cheeks again. "—do that. It hurts my cheeks a lot, and I can't really control it."

He didn't mention his mental anguish. He'd picked up pretty quickly that this program was of the variety that chose people who didn't have much to go back to and much to notice their absence. Talking about his parents' death would most likely not go over very well with the genuine hard cases here who hadn't had parents at all.